Tex

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1979

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary

Tex and Mason are interviewed for the local television news about the hitchhiker and the kidnapping. They decide to indulge in one of the joints that Lem gave them to celebrate and relax when the phone rings. It’s Pop, who saw them on the news. He has called to see if they were okay. Pop says he is coming home.

When Pop arrives, the boys greet him with enthusiasm. However, Mason is resentful of the fact that he has had to care for Tex and worry about money while Pop has been away. For his part, Tex begins to view his father like an individual person rather than as a parent, “[a]lmost like he was a visitor” (132). Pop promises to retrieve Negrito for Tex. That night, Tex has another nightmare during which he sleepwalks.

The day Pop is supposed to find and buy back Negrito, he forgets and attends a poker tournament instead. Mason is angry, and Tex is hurt. Pop promises that he has the money, but the boys will have to track down the horse themselves and negotiate the cost. When Tex sees Negrito, the horse is practicing barrel racing with a young girl. It becomes immediately clear that the girl has become attached to the horse, and the horse has been well cared for. Mason is unable to convince the new owners to sell him back. Tex tells him that “I am going to hate you for the rest of my life for this” (145).

Chapter 8 Summary

Tex tries to deal with the loss of his horse and finally decides to ask Jamie on an actual date. She says that her father would never allow it, but that they could sit together at Mason’s basketball game. Tex worries about whether Johnny will be accepting of his crush on his sister.

Mason gets hurt in the basketball game, so Jamie’s older brother, Bob, unsuccessfully covers for him and the Garyville team loses. After the game, Tex offers to take Jamie for a soda in Mason’s truck, and instead pulls off to the side of the road. The two begin kissing and the encounter begins to escalate when Jamie stops Tex’s advances. He is confused, but she explains that she is not ready, that she needs time to think about the direction her life will take: “I’m having enough trouble figuring things out right now without throwing in sex” (158). When she tells Tex that she may love him now, but might not forever, he is devastated.

Chapter 9 Summary

Mason won a basketball scholarship, and Tex hopes that Pop will pay more attention to him once Mason is gone. He still nurses his crush on Jamie, but the two are no longer talking. One of Tex and Johnny’s pranks land them in more serious trouble, and they are called into the school office. The two cap keys on the office typewriters the day of a big exam for the school’s student body and Tex is forced to sit out of class in the front office all day. Johnny’s father, Cole, comes in to address the issue during the school day, while Mason arrives to serve as Tex’s guardian. Cole blames the McCormicks for Johnny’s bad behavior. Mason reasons with Cole, explaining that both are neither a good or bad influence on each other and wins the man’s respect. Tex notes that the respect of the Collins family patriarch is something Mason truly desires.

Tex is given a lunch break where he into Lem in the school parking lot. He seems stoned, Tex observes, and unenthusiastic about his family life. Tex returns to the office after lunch and waits to receive his punishment at the end of the school day. The principal has decided to be lenient with Tex, offering to help him find a job working with horses over the summer. Mason returns after school and begins lecturing Tex about his immature behavior, when Pop arrives. Instead of being stern with Tex, Pop seems amused by his childish pranks. This enrages Mason, who finally bursts out with the stunning announcement that “[h]e is my brother even if he isn’t your son!” (177). At this revelation, Tex flees the building as fast as he can.

Chapters 7-9 Analysis

While Tex shows childlike excitement at the television interview—in which he quips “God gave me my face. But he let me pick my nose” (126)—he is maturing in other ways. He begins to recognize that Pop might be a flawed individual in his own right, not to mention a negligent parent: “But all of a sudden it hit me that Pop was a completely separate person from us [...] He was just the same as he always was, but he was unconnected” (132). Significantly, Pop’s renewed presence sparks Tex to have another sleepwalking nightmare the night he comes home.

Pop makes promises he doesn’t keep, constantly disappointing Tex, and thus Tex must look elsewhere for validation. Indeed, when Tex is unable to retrieve Negrito, partially because of Pop’s negligence. His attention shifts elsewhere, and he asks Jamie out: “She looked at me with the eyes of a wicked colt” (147). Jamie replaces Negrito as the object of his affection, a young colt instead of a horse.

However, Jamie has ideas of her own, and she protests the way in which she is treated differently from her brothers at home: “Cole [her father] has the hardest time understanding that I’m a person” (148). Later, she will halt Tex’s sexual overtures, recognizing that she isn’t ready for a serious relationship. She realizes that, as people mature, they grow and change in unexpected ways. After claiming she loves him, she follows up by saying: “Right now I think you’re the only boy I’ll ever feel this way about, but, then, I’m probably wrong about that” (158). Her understanding of teenage attraction and mature love is more nuanced than Tex’s.

Chapter 9 ends with the revelation that Pop is not actually Tex’s father. Up to this point, Tex is continually comparing himself to his father, feeling as if they are more alike than Mason and Pop. Again, Tex will have to find validation elsewhere, to find his own way. Throughout literature and popular culture, the theme of lost, absent, or substitute father abounds; from Harry Potter and Dumbledore to Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, young men learn how to face their destiny only when they lose their paternal ideal.